Abstract
Although it has been an important part of the academic discussion for more than 10 years, Euroscepticism (especially in connection with party politics) has not been so far adequately defined. The widely accepted definition given by Taggart and Szczerbiak, who has divided Euroscepticism between its “hard” and “soft” version, suffers from several weaknesses as the whole conceptualization lacks the counterpart of Euroscepticism (pro European attitude) as well as the definition of EU statehood (the EU as a polity). Thus, almost every critique against the current form of European integration is labelled as Euroscepticism. This approach, widely present both in political and scholarly discourses, is built upon the implicit conceptualization of the European Union as a static and finite actor. The paper challenges this conceptualization of Euroscepticism and through a detailed analysis of the current “state of the art” offers a different perspective where the conceptualization of Euroscepticism is a consequence of previously stated standards concerning the pro-European stance and the EU polity.
